


Shoot for the Moon

by Norickayer



Category: Young Avengers (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Space, College in the future on the moon, Gen, Noh-varr is talked about but does not actually appear, YoungAvengersHE2k17, mutant moon colony, with powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-03-01 05:48:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13288284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Norickayer/pseuds/Norickayer
Summary: @americanhumanDEPORT MUTANTS. THEY DON’T LIKE THIS COUNTRY THEY CAN GTFO #humanpride@bimutiebye@americanhuman This is asinine, where tf do you want us to go@americanhuman@bimutiebye the moon for all I careIt was a snapshot in time. The players didn’t matter so much as the irony that, decades after twitter became obsolete, David was sitting in his dorm room in an educational facility in a mutant colony ON THE @$%&ING MOON. So @$%& that guy, anyway.David leaned back in his cheap plastic desk chair and sipped a liquid that was the closest approximation to coffee to be had on Genosha, Mutant Moon Colony.





	Shoot for the Moon

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for phoenixyfriend's Young Avengers Holiday Exchange 2017. Specifically, this was my gift fic for xaverie, who prompted:
> 
> 1\. "Anything with David and Tommy, please! Literally anything with these two."  
> 2\. "a nice little friendship fic with America and David in college. Or David and Noh-Varr in... space?"  
> 3\. Kate & Eli & Tommy
> 
> So I did all of those things. At once.
> 
> Have fun, I hope you like it.

In the small, cramped dorm room that Tommy shared with David, the walls were almost bare. Tommy wasn't the type to decorate (or rather, he planned a lot and never made it to execution). David had a single sign up on the wall, a photocopy of what he considered the funniest image ever immortalized in a textbook. It’s a series of tweets from the late 2010s, a conversation between a right-wing political commentator and an anonymous mutant, her exact identity either deliberately obscured or lost to history.

  
@americanhuman  
DEPORT MUTANTS. THEY DON’T LIKE THIS COUNTRY THEY CAN GTFO #humanpride

  
@bimutiebye  
@americanhuman This is asinine, where tf do you want us to go

  
@americanhuman  
@bimutiebye the moon for all I care

  
It was a snapshot in time. The players didn’t matter so much as the irony that, decades after the social media platform became obsolete, David was sitting in his dorm room in an educational facility in a mutant colony ON THE FUCKING MOON. So fuck that guy, anyway.

  
David leaned back in his cheap plastic desk chair and sipped a liquid that was the closest approximation to coffee to be had on Genosha, Mutant Moon Colony.

 

* * *

  
Tommy was technically Genoshan royalty, or he would be if they hadn’t abolished the monarchy several decades ago. David wasn’t sure if his absent-minded entitlement to everything David owned was a former-royalty thing or just a Tommy-thing. There were several data points in favor of each conclusion, including the habits of Tommy’s uncle and Tommy’s brother. However, Pietro was also a speedster, so maybe the confounding variable was super-speed instead.

  
“Hey.” Tommy, who was not there a second ago, suddenly appeared, holding David’s mug of not-coffee.

  
David barely blinked, a testament to the two months he already spent as Tommy’s roommate and de facto best friend. He did, however, take his caffeine back. Tommy didn’t put up a fight.

  
“So I-was-just-with Eli and Kate, and they said- can-you-believe Professor Darkholme is assigning another group project?”

  
“Yes,” David replied with a smile, “Because it’s in the syllabus. The whole course is group projects.”

  
Tommy looked insulted. “You mean I’m going to be stuck with Eli Bradley for eight more months?”

  
“Yup,” David made a popping noise at the ‘p’, enjoying the contortions of Tommy’s facial expressions.

  
“I quit. Can-I-be-in your group?” Tommy asked.

  
“No way, I see enough of your ugly face as it is.”

  
“I’m hurt.”

  
David laughed. “Ok, how about this: I already have one deadbeat group member, and if you join then I’d be the only person doing any work.”

  
Tommy considered this. “Ok, that-makes-sense. Does that mean Miss chaos-deity actually does work?”

  
David scoffed. “No, Loki hasn’t shown up to a group meeting since two weeks in. Noh-Varr does work.”

  
“No way he does more homework than I do.”

 

“Way.”

  
“I have super-speed. I did a week’s worth in ten minutes.”

  
“Yeah, a week late. Noh puts his earphones in and gets in the zone. It’s called flow.”

  
Tommy stared deep into David’s eyes. “Do you have to know every. Single. Thing.”

  
David stared back, and replied very seriously: “Yes.”

 

* * *

  
Life in a Lunar colony was pretty normal, but then again David moved there when he was very young, so he didn’t remember much about Earth. Weather, mostly. It didn’t rain on Genosha, unless you were hanging out in the gardens when the irrigation system kicked in.

  
Tommy liked to make up facts about Earth to tell freshmen. Tommy had never been to Earth, and David was pretty sure that his “facts” were only ever accidentally correct.

  
Genosha was a mutant colony by tradition. There were still mutants born on Earth, and they were under no obligation to emigrate. Some humans were born on Genosha, and considering the extraterrestrial immigrants, only around 70% of the Genosha population had an activated X gene.

  
Tommy once told the freshmen that he had been born on Earth, but the government sent giant robotic guards after him when someone saw him use his speed, and he had to stow away on a cargo shipment to Genosha.

  
The freshman was America Chavez, who stared at Tommy with furrowed brows until he laughed it off and introduced himself. Tommy had this habit of drawing people to him and running off to the next thing, leaving David with a bunch of strangers and a Tommy-shaped hole. This had the positive benefit of being the primary way David made friends these days.

  
America turned out to be really cool. She was more alien than most, being from a completely different dimension. David found this fascinating and confusing, especially when she knew people’s names before she met them.

  
“They look like someone I met before,” America explained one day, “But they aren’t the same people. Any detail could be different.”

  
That meant that America had to remember which biographic detail belonged to the version in her home dimension and which belonged to the person on Genosha. David thought that must be immensely difficult, and David had a reputation for his amazing memory.

  
His memory really was incredible, especially considering that his mutant power was only his ability to gain information, not retain and synthesize it. Those parts were all David. So was his mutation.

  
David held the seemingly-contradictory positions that 1) David’s mutant power is who he is, or a part of it and 2) if his x-gene was not active, he would still have an awesome memory and analytical ability, because David is awesome. This, David would explain to anyone who would listen, was because of the difference between social identity and the biology of mutant powers.

  
Mostly the only person who listened was Tommy. Tommy was easily distracted and seemed to always be on the move, but he would sit on the desk chair at 2am and listen to David philosophize about mutant identity. David once asked why it was easier for Tommy to listen to him and not to the lectures in class.

  
“What you’re saying matters,” Tommy answered. “Like, I see exactly how much it matters to you and that makes it matter to me, you know? And it’s easier to care about your stuff than international business any day.”

  
Which, when you got right down to it, was why Tommy was David’s best friend.

 

* * *

  
"So what are you losers doing in your free time?" Tommy asked. He casually leaned against a table in the library-slash-study hall. He (casually) glanced at Eli and Kate to see if they noticed.

  
Kate noted that he was making an effort to speak slowly for once, which belied a seriousness that sharply contrasted with his "casual" pose.

  
"Eli is running for Student Government President and I'm his VP," Kate answered without looking up. She cross-referenced her notes with the information on her tablet instead.

  
"Wait," Tommy stood up straight, then realized what he was doing and relaxed again. "You, the girl who already made herself responsible for making sure a half-dozen freshmen remember to eat, as well as making sure my brother doesn't have an emotional breakdown- you are looking for more responsibilities?"

  
Eli turned a laugh into a cough and continued pretending to ignore the conversation.

  
"Well unlike some people, I actually give a shit about how this school is run," Kate told him, "Also if I'm the Vice President I can still leave most of the actual work to Eli."

  
"See that sounds more like it."

  
"Can we please just get this done? I actually have more important things to do that trying to impress Kate." Eli rolled his eyes and gestured to the table between them, covered in the artifacts of Academy life on Genosha: each student's tablet, plus a small library of dime-sized SD cards containing supplemental information for their thesis project.

  
"Do you, though?" Tommy asked, pretending to look at his fingernails.

  
Kate giggled.

 

* * *

  
America was cool. Like, really cool. She exuded the calm, effortless chill that Tommy tried and failed to mimic. She was comfortable in her skin, comfortable in her identity, comfortable in her place in the uni(multi)verse. David admired that, and tried to emulate it.

  
It took him a month to figure out that America was not comfortable with her place in Genosha.

  
She threw the pen into the wall of the study lounge, which stubbornly resisted her as it had resisted hundreds of mutants before her.

  
“This is pointless,” she spat. “Why am I even here?”

  
David looked down at her tablet, and at the notes she was taking. “You said you were having trouble with Philosophy and I offered to help.”

  
“Obviously.”

  
“Well do you want the help, or do you want to destroy communal property?”

  
America made a face. It looked like what would happen if she wanted to frown and pout at the same time, and her lips had decided to split the difference.

  
“Look, a lot of people struggle with this stuff. Foucault isn’t easy to understand if you haven’t been exposed to the ideas before-“

  
“There’s no point to me being here,” America told him. Her eyes found his, and she slumped down into her plastic chair. Everything tended to be made of plastic here. At least, small things, New things. The oldest things here were made of metal. The basic structures of Genosha were metal, massive seamless compounds formed from molten ore by the power of the founder, Magneto.

  
But the future is made of recyclable plastic.

  
America was daring him to disagree. David could tell, and didn’t fall into the trap.

  
“So why are you?” He asked. Why was she in Genosha. Why was she studying. Why did she accept his help, if she didn’t think she belonged?

 

America looked away. She opened her mouth, but was unable to put her thoughts and disparate feelings into words.

  
“Look, America, if you want to be here, then you belong here. Genosha is a sanctuary. But no one is keeping you here.”

  
"-I like it here," America hissed. She fisted her hands in her tight curls and rested her elbows on the table.

  
David took the scene in. He adjusted the volume of his voice accordingly.

  
“They’re not going to kick you out if you fail Philosophy 100,” he told her. “Even I have failed classes. No one’s perfect and life gets in the way.”

  
“Don’t lie to make me feel better.” America leaned back in her chair.

  
David smiled, because insulted was better than hopeless.

  
“I really did fail a class.”

  
“What class, then?”

  
“Creative Writing. I accidentally plagiarized my final project.”

  
“...Accidentally?”

  
“Nobody really understood how my power worked when I first got here. I thought I was just inspired. I had to work with a couple of mentors to figure out how to distinguish between my own thoughts and incoming information. I can usually tell now.”

  
America whistled a long note, high to low.

  
After he judged that enough time had passed, David continued.

  
“So. If you’re having trouble reading it, have you tried using your tablet’s text-to-speech program?”

  
America scoffed. Then she thought about it.

  
“You think it would help?”

  
David shrugged. “Maybe. It helps me concentrate if I can hear it and read it at the same time. The enunciation helps me keep track of sentence structure. Philosophers have some looong sentences.”

  
The two sat in silence for a minute or two while America fiddled with her tablet.

  
"...what if I can't do this?" America's voice was uncharacteristically quiet, although there was no one else in the room to overhear her admission.

  
David rolled with it. "Then you claim you have a political objection to it and finish the semester with an incomplete instead of an F."

  
America scoffed, and glared at his for even suggetsing it. "There's no way that would work."

  
David shrugged. "It worked for Noh-Varr."

  
"....yeah?"

  
"Yeah. He was getting really fed up with his Earth History requirement. His initial plan was to burn 'Earth sucks' into the quad."

  
That finally got a laugh from America. David counted that as a win.

  
"You know, I haven't met your version of Noh-Varr yet, but that doesn't surprise me at all."


End file.
